So yeah, people are pissed about their favorites not qualifying (still gutted over EstoniaL) and are posting about what’s possibly wrong with [insert country here]’s musical tastes and how great entries are ignored. The little issue is that the opinion of the fandom doesn’t represent the opinion of the general audience.

For starters, not every person watching Eurovision votes. If someone’s phone doesn’t have a sim card from a country participating in the contest, they can’t vote. Or if someone is watching from a nonparticipating country (so much for voting in the USA), they can’t vote. Then there are some people who are able to vote, but they don’t.

And even if every person in the fandom who was able to vote put in their 20 votes, the scores would still differ from YouTube’s “top 42 based on 1500 rankings” (given that this was accurate in the first place), due to the casual voters. They don’t follow the contest from the beginning of national final season; they just turn on the TV at 21:00CET, and they listen to each song for the first time. Instead of taking a few weeks for a song to grow from bottom 10 to top 5 in their rankings, it all depends on those three minutes.

I’m still annoyed about the ESC bloodbath semifinal results, but it’s time to move on to the next semifinal and save all the complaining for after the 14th…

Who actually qualified: Hungary, Croatia, Netherlands, Armenia, Russia, Czech Republic, Cyprus, Austria, Azerbaijan, and Malta, so now we have to say goodbye to Greece and Bosnia-Herzegovina’s perfect qualification record, and we can say hello to Czech Republic’s highest score ever.

8 out of 10 isn’t that bad, but I’m just really disappointed about Estonia and Iceland not qualifying. I thought Iceland was a sure qualifier due to its position in the odds and how well-produced the entry was, and that she was going to beat her 20th place position from 2012. Looks like the odds were wrong.

And then there’s Estonia. Given that it was 11th in the odds to qualify, I should have been more careful when making my predictions, but my heart just told me to hit play. Given Stig Rästa’s composition job and all the media attention from the Baltic Boys memes, and how much I loved belting the song in the car, Play was in my top 5, maybe even top 3 of the entire year. Unlike at work, when half the time I had to crank up my voice an octave because I felt self-conscious about my voice being too low and not matching my name, I didn’t have to worry about anything. It was chill and relaxing, I could sing away cramps with the song, and for 3 minutes I could be proud to hit all the notes. If I could, I would swap out Hungary and Azerbaijan for Estonia and Iceland.

But since I can’t, here’s an angry Måns.

I’m really happy about Croatia qualifying though, since it’s also one of my top 5 and her rehearsal got a lot of flak online (mostly about the tent/solar panel dress). I’ll be waving my Croatian flag on Saturday.

1) Given that this is my first time predicting, 8 out of 10 isn’t that bad: My predicted qualifying entries for Semi-Final 1: Armenia, Estonia, Sweden, Albania, Russia, Azerbaijan, Ukraine, Netherlands, Montenegro, Hungary, while the actual qualifying entries in Semi-Final 1: Armenia, Sweden, Iceland, Russia, Azerbaijan, Ukraine, San Marino, Netherlands, Montenegro, Hungary. Then again, no one really expected Iceland or San Marino to qualify.

2) It’s really hard to study for a 7-week class while watching the contest, even when the sound is turned of (Family still doesn’t approve of me being a fan XD ). Since I didn’t know if I could watch the SF live , I watched all the rehearsals (or at least the recap of them) and figured that the sound would have been pretty similar.

3) My sister will tolerate recaps, as long as she gets to make sarcastic remarks while she watches them.

Let’s see what happens in the second semi-final. It’s going to be really exciting for me, since most of my favourite entries are in this SF.

I don’t think I can decide which 10 I want in the final, because I like them all (though I wouldn’t really mind if Lithuania and Romania sat out). However, if Israel and Switzerland don’t make the final, I will be very upset.

There’s less than 24 hours left until the first semi-final begins, and the first jury semi-final has already begun. Unlike past years, there aren’t any songs that I don’t like this year (*cough Sweden 3 years ago*), and that makes it even harder to try to come up with a top 10.